STRATFORD >> No one ever stopped to pick up Natalie Carpenter or give her a ride when she went knocking on neighbors’ doors asking for a hitch to neighboring towns.

Sometimes she’d walk as far as Milford, about 30 minutes away from the quaint, single-story home with a basketball hoop she shared with her mother and sister in an elderly, mostly middle- to upper-class neighborhood in northern Stratford.

In this small town of about 51,000, everybody knows of the 18-year-old Carpenter, notorious and a nobody at the same time.

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People watched Carpenter, a former student in Stratford Public Schools, wander the city streets, a cigarette between her fingertips while she muttered incoherent things to herself.

People immediately compared Carpenter to Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old responsible for killing 20 elementary school students and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary, before turning the gun on himself, in a deadly school shooting that shook the nation and prompted lawmakers to push for tighter gun control on automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Some time before she was arrested last Tuesday, Carpenter walked into Tactical Arms, a gun store on Migeon Avenue in Torrington, asking how to legally obtain a handgun.

The store owner wouldn’t confirm if Carpenter filled out paperwork to obtain a gun.

A 19-year-old college student whose mother said her son avoided Carpenter “like the plague” whenever she’d ask him to play, left his parents a note on the kitchen counter top the morning after he saw the news about her allegedly threatening schools.

“I called it,” he wrote.

A Register Citizen reporter went to Carpenter’s home to try to speak with her mother, Wendy, but she declined an interview request, saying only she’s confident her daughter will be vindicated when the legal process plays out.

“She’s not going to get hammered when the truth comes out,” Wendy Carpenter said.

Bizarre behavior

Stratford residents know Carpenter from bizarre brushes with neighbors and law enforcement, and several neighbors spoke of a man named Nick Forrest, now 22 years old, as the subject of persistent harassment at the hands of Carpenter.

Forrest, who was reluctant to talk for fear of reprisal, said the woman grew so infatuated with his family, they mulled purchasing and installing a surveillance system to protect their home. He said the harassment started in 2008 when he was a teenager and grew worse over the years.

Since then, cops have been called to his family’s home for disturbances involving Carpenter at least a half-dozen times, most recently on Dec. 23, when she was cited for trespassing on their property. Forrest said the harassment stopped periodically, then picked back up.

“It’s been a bad nightmare,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s over, but hopefully the neighborhood gets some peace. As long as she’s not around here, I don’t care.”

Neighbors also recalled an incident last spring when Carpenter fled on foot after crashing her mother’s vehicle into a Ford Mustang parked on the street.

Lt. Frank Eannotti, spokesman for Stratford police, wouldn’t confirm any of the incidents because most occurred when Carpenter was a minor. He referred a reporter to a statement issued by the department last week.

“It reminds me of the Adam Lanza story,” 54-year-old neighbor Shari Carey said. Carey has lived with her husband, Shawn, in Carpenter’s neighborhood for nearly a decade. The Mustang Carpenter struck belonged to the couple’s nephew.

The vehicle was pushed back about six feet and suffered moderate damage. Carpenter had abandoned the vehicle and took off on foot.

Stratford police later explained to the couple Carpenter had visited a doctor for sleep walking and didn’t recall getting behind the wheel of her mother’s vehicle or crashing.

Long before the wreck, Shawn Carey and his wife recalled Carpenter asking to borrow a screwdriver and a pump to fill a flat tire on her bike, peculiar requests from a girl whom neighbors understand suffers from an emotional or developmental disorder.

Joe Michaek, a friend of one of Carpenter’s neighbors, said he often saw Carpenter sitting outside on the porch in the summer time or walking her dog, a yappy pooch that barked in the window when a reporter rang the Carpenters’ doorbell.

On occasion, the two shot baskets on a basketball hoop in the front yard.

Michaek was shocked when a reporter relayed the news of Carpenter’s arrest and said he was under the impression she was still living at home despite not seeing her for about a month.

“I just can’t believe it,” he said. “She’s been so nice.”

Others said they’ve seen a darker side of Carpenter, which is part of the reason people directed their children not to interact with her, afraid she’d lash out at them like she did her mother, Wendy.

Neighbors said the Carpenter and her mother had a stormy relationship, the sound of yelling and door-slamming echoing through the quiet neighborhood.

Nancy Bevacqua, 49, whose family moved into Carpenters’ neighborhood about two years ago, said she has seen the police or medical personnel at their residence at least two dozen times. She recalled another incident when Carpenter, apparently, spray-painted a nasty message, directed at her mother, across the garage door.

“[We thought], ‘Some day were gonna come home and there’s gonna be yellow tape and police,’” Bevacqua said. “The state saw this coming. The police saw this coming. This isn’t a surprise.”

Another neighbor described Carpenter as a “ticking time bomb,” which is at odds with how a law enforcement official familiar with Carpenter described her to The Register Citizen.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the woman’s threat was more likely attention-getting behavior from someone craving social interaction.

“People who make threats are looking for help,” the official said. “She’s not a terrorist. Terrorists take responsibility for things after they happen.”

‘Everybody’s friend’

Interviews with neighbors, former and current Stratford students and a number of tweets referencing Carpenter seem to paint a portrait of a woman desperate for friendship, but shunned by the outside world.

A woman, who identified herself as Jessica Brown, tweeted March 6, the day after Carpenter was arraigned, “Why is bunnell [sic] surprised? You all turned natalie carpenter [sic] into a laughing stock so why are you shocked she wanted to shoot up the school?”

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said, “She thought she was everybody’s friend, but we all stayed away from her.”

But those familiar with the woman, citing innumerable run-ins with law enforcement and inexplicable behavior, said Carpenter was partially responsible for the isolation she experienced.

In the community, Carpenter was so notorious, the Forrest family kept a file on Carpenter with a trove of documents and receipts detailing past problems.

When Forrest called his mother to ask where she kept the file so a reporter could review it, the woman grew agitated and told her son to hand the phone to the reporter.

“I’ve put up with this [expletive] for six years,” she said in a short telephone conversation.

One of the more serious incidents took place in 2010 or 2011, when Carpenter rammed her mother’s vehicle into the Forrests’ garage door. Police were called to the house, and the garage door was completely totaled and had to be replaced.

The family also suspects Carpenter of egging and throwing rocks their house, keying Nick Forrest’s car and spray-painting expletives on it.

Forrest said Carpenter often antagonized him when he drove by her home, on Overland Street.

Forrest remembers driving by Carpenter’s home once when she rolled a yoga ball in front of his car.

Forrest pulled over and told Carpenter she could have caused and accident and needed to be more careful. Grasping what she had done, Carpenter apologized and vowed not to do it again.

Carpenter met with the school district’s Planning and Placement Team and became the school district’s student a day before she was arrested.

Board Chairman Ken Traub said the school district is responsible for paying for her education while she’s incarcerated. “She’s here and she’s our problem, financially,” Traub said. “We’re trying to fight that, but I don’t know if we’ll win.”

While that’s sorted out, police say they’ve obtained a warrant for 19-year-old male described as a “co-conspirator.” The two allegedly had a written “manifesto,” Traub told board members in an email, but police mentioned only a “verbal” threat.

A case worker at the 383 Main St. facility where the two were staying overheard the suspects plotting violence and reported them to police. An arrest warrant for Carpenter was ordered sealed for two weeks.

Police charged the man, identified in court documents as an accomplice with the last name Thulin, with conspiracy to commit first-degree assault and criminal attempt to commit first-degree assault. Police plan to take him into custody once he’s released from a secure facility where he’s receiving treatment.

Online court documents show a 19-year-old man named Peter Thulin, who lives at the same 383 Main St. facility as Carpenter, is facing charges in three unrelated cases.

Carpenter lists having attended Cedarhurst High School, Stratford High School and Frank Scott Bunnell High School, the same school mentioned in one of Carpenter’s threatening overtures.

According to her Facebook, Carpenter left Stratford High School in 2011 and Frank Scott Bunnell High School in 2009.

The woman claims she graduated last year from Cedarhurst, a private therapeutic high school which serves troubled youth. The school is operated by Yale University, according to its website, and offers programming geared toward 18- to- 21-year-old special education students with autism, or who are emotionally disturbed.

Carpenter is being held at the Niantic Correctional Center for Women on charges of first-degree assault and criminal attempt to commit first-degree assault.

If she makes $300,000 bond, she is ordered not to enter any school property or possess any weapons. She’ll appear in Litchfield Superior Court, where more serious offenses are heard, on March 18 for her next court appearance.